Perspectives on capital markets and personal finance

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My Biases

Much of today’s thought (most prominently journalism) is predicated upon the idea that impartiality is preferable to advocacy. Lazy analysts often place ideas or personalities essentially side-by-side — which can be very helpful when comparing and contrasting reasonable competing ideas, concepts or approaches — even when one makes sense and the other is just plain silly. Doing so creates a false equivalency and artificially elevates the silly idea or personality in the process. Watchwords like equality, fairness, tolerance, and objectivity seem to rule the day. And those are fine virtues, in their proper place and perspective.

When I worked in Manhattan, I often commented, only partly in jest, that I preferred the Post to the Times because of its lack of pretense. It didn’t claim to be above the fray, and I don’t either. Where I perceive reasonable alternatives to exist, I will strive to be fair to all sides. That said, I will readily express my point-of-view and what I base that view on (evidence and data-based, to the extent possible) without any pretense of objectivity. And when I perceive there to be a clear right answer, I won’t be afraid to say so and I won’t shy away from advocating it unapologetically.

In our current environment, with alleged experts seemingly everywhere and with virtually unlimited information available on-line to all, credibility is likely to move toward people and sources that demonstrate their understanding of events and situations via predictive accuracy and qualitative understanding rather than by mere claims of objectivity or expertise. Accordingly, I see it as my mission to find and become a financial signal amidst all of life’s noise.